Mother in law gave Mrs C a birthday cheque. I used the Lloyds phone app to pay it in.
Immediately I’d done so, I noticed it was made out in Mrs C’s maiden name she’s not used for forty years. No means of “recalling” the cheque in the app.
After going into the normal “pending” for a day or so, it’s apparently cleared, with a standard message from the bank saying so.
I can’t imagine a person ever looks at these cheque photos. Is there a computer text reading thing involved that reads the cheque, but failed to pick up the wrong name, or could I write any old thing on a cheque and expect it to clear?
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cheques have always been read by machine ever since the early 70's, which is why they had OCR text at the bottom. The bank teller was just an extra (now redundant) level of checking.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 15 Feb 24 at 09:06
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Sure. I meant is there some fancy software that reads the handwritten name. If not, I can make out a cheque to Donald Trump and pay it into your account?
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...historically it was never much of a problem unless the cheque was "crossed" with "a/c payee". (Though technically the original payee should probably endorse the rear - it certainly didn't always happen).
I'm not sure if the practice has changed, but certainly cheque books started to be pre-printed with that crossing quite some time ago.
(I use cheques so seldom, I have an old, part-used book without them crossed, and a slightly newer, but still very old, complete book with the crossing printed. They will be 10s of years old).
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MICR Magnetic Ink Character Recognition.
OCR is used to read the date and the value and of course the bottom line if scanned in using an app.
Re the cheque clearing. If someone complains about it being paid to the wrong account the back will claim it back. They can do it months after.
The banks also take a view that the money saved in processing these offsets a few errors that may cost them.
B2B cheques an almost a thing of the past.
1.5 billion cheques were processed by UK banks in 2007. In 2022 it was 129 million.
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I had cause to go onto my NatWest online account yesterday and noticed a button to Order New Paying In book. Remember them? :-)
Last edited by: smokie on Thu 15 Feb 24 at 10:10
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>> I had cause to go onto my NatWest online account yesterday and noticed a button
>> to Order New Paying In book. Remember them? :-)
Not needed a paying in book. But there are two or three dog show a year where I still have to write a cheque to enter. Can you still get postal orders?
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See if Web Collect would work for them. You can do a bank transfer and the software - which was designed by and for small clubs - will check back to the bank statements etc. Saves a load of effort.
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>> MICR Magnetic Ink Character Recognition.
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>> OCR is used to read the date and the value and of course the bottom
>> line if scanned in using an app.
MICR came later, OCR was first,. I used to fix the OCR cheque readers in the mid 70's
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I was still in shorts in the early ‘70s!
MICR came first, invented in the 50’s. Reliable OCR came later.
After all, why invent MICR if OCR was reliable?
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My chequebook still had the preprinted date of 19 on it.
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A reminiscence.
The cheques in the 70's were in general encoded with the amount at the branch where they were paid in, as they were totalled on an NCR or IBM, I can't remember which, MICR proof encoding machine. Ours had comptometer keyboards I think, but I can't find any images of them. Soon after I started in 1973, they were replaced by ACTUAL, ONLINE, Burroughs TC500? terminals. No display screen, they 'talked' to the operator only via the printer.
Non-branch cheques went off to central clearing, whence they were processed and returned to the issuing banks/branches.
One of the cashiers' jobs was to check words and figures matched, in date, and cancel the cheques - one by one! The piles of cheques were waiting for us at the start of the day and had to be done before we opened at 9.30. The branch I started at in 1973 had the account of the now dissolved XXX XXX Hide and Skin Co. - all the cheques had been presumably been issued to butchers and slaughterers, many were b***** and they smelt like a butcher's shop. One didn't lick one's fingers. There would be a 3 or 4 inch pile of these every day for this one account.
The current accounts had not long been computerised. The deposit accounts were not. Debits and credits were written in a ledger by a clerk sitting on a tall stool at a sloping desk with a round ruler. Every 6 months the interest would be manually calculated with the aid of tables and added to the balance.
I lasted 5 years or so. It felt at the time as if I was leaving opportunities behind, but I just couldn't bear it after I was practically exiled to a small branch (think Walmington on Sea) for being bolshie at my annual 'appraisal'. It proved to be a good decision. Local domestic banking has all but disappeared now, and in between it was horribly dumbed down in terms of career opportunities and conditions of work.
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Some very true words there Manatee.
I am amazed at the local branch staff when I visit.
They do an awful lot for their relatively low pay, especially the branch manager.
Whilst the calculation and processing side of things is no doubt easier, rules and regs wise, it is a much more complicated role then it was decades ago and opportunities are very limited.
As an aside, we have some branch staff on zero hour contracts. These are staff who want to work occasionally but not fixed hours. They cover staff absences such as holidays and illness and are available at short notice. There is no penalty for not being available and they get a small premium for being available at short notice. These contracts have been specifically requested by the staff. They are not part of our standard offering.
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Burroughs TC500. The electromechanical beast with, I kid you not, an undertray to catch the oil. I seem to recall the oil was also used to fill the casing of a large internal transformer but I may be wrong.
I was National Tech Support for Banking and Financial Systems at Nixdorf and I remember watching the Burroughs engineers removing a TC500 from one of the first branches of Midland to receive Nixdorf 8864s. As they dragged it aross the back office one of the castors broke and it dumped about a pint of oil all over the carpet. The Griffin House suits who had assembled for a photo-op just fled.
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I got a tear-off cheque from a utility last year. First in ages. It was for under £2.00
I tore it up !
Ted
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>> I tore it up !
>>
That's why they sent you the cheque and didn't transfer it to the account you pay from.
It takes but a moment to use your phone app to scan in the cheque.
Years ago (late '80s) a now defunct Govt. department issued payable orders (cheques) on a huge sheet of paper - somewhere between A4 and A3 in size. The PO was perforated and in a corner.
It was a deliberate ploy to manage payments out - i.e. improve cashflow as the recipient of the PO often didn't realise the PO was attached.
Last edited by: zippy on Thu 15 Feb 24 at 23:19
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I was receiving the occasional cheque from Power Networks (IIRC) as payment for the wayleave for the power lines that overflew my property.
The power line had been removed years ago.
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Was that worth much BT? I know someone (first hand, not rumour) who recently got £13k via a no-win company for a nearby power pylon. One off payment.
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 16 Feb 24 at 09:50
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>> Was that worth much BT? I know someone (first hand, not rumour) who recently got
>> £13k via a no-win company for a nearby power pylon. One off payment.
Good grief, nothing like that. £18.90 for ten years overflying. I didn't cash it as the power line had been removed. There's a long story about it.
How on earth did anyone get £13K for a pylon?
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Yes I was amazed too. It's one of the big pylons and the feet are on a green not quite adjacent to the property. I don't know if the payment was for the eyesore or the physical cables near the property. Either way it was a nice windfall for them - they were contacted out of the blue by the legal company.
The place was only built less than ten years ago so I was surprised the leccy board didn't deal with it at the time the estate was built. There are at least probably 10 or so other properties within a similar distance from the pylon so quite expensive for us electricity customers!!
In fact here it is - roughly mid pic, just below the white van. The house in question is in the picture but isn't one of those immediately adjacent.
t.ly/_oRro
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 16 Feb 24 at 12:54
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I read somewhere about a guy "stealing" electricity from Hi Voltage lines. Essentially it went along the lines of him laying insulated copper lines and coils along his boundary fence under the lines, picking up the EMF radiated. Several hundred watts a day apparently.
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>> I read somewhere about a guy "stealing" electricity from Hi Voltage lines. Essentially it went
>> along the lines of him laying insulated copper lines and coils along his boundary fence
>> under the lines, picking up the EMF radiated. Several hundred watts a day apparently.
Similarly, there was a tale about someone who lived adjacent to the boundary of an RAF radio station. He built a garage next to the boundary hedge and when he installed a fluorescent light, it lit up with no power supply. A radio feeder was in the hedge line.
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>> How on earth did anyone get £13K for a pylon?
>>
....sold it for scrap....
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I can't hold the phone steady enough whilst keeping the cheque in the right markings. As I click the take button, it invariably moves. Heaven knows...I've tried ! My hands are not steady enough now !
Ted
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Paying in a cheque - Zero
